The next dimension of running

I love running. What I do hate, though, is having to evade people who are slower than me, smog, dogs barking at me – and especially I hate to run always the same routes. I could change the routes, but then again I have bad orienteering skills, and would get lost immediately.

That’s why I got excited about two companies offering a solution for my problem: Cyberith and Virtuix. These companies offer movement simulators for Virtual Reality (VR). Means: You put your goggles on, get on the device, and start to run through any VR you can imagine.

So far, the focus of both companies is on entertainment purposes only. The idea is to allow players of VR games to enter the worlds, without having to leave their living room. With the devices, they can run, walk, strafe and crouch, just like they would in real world. This is already a big step for VR entertainment, as it solves the issue of “moving” with something you hold in your hands, even though it would feel much more natural to move with your feet – and another important step to achieve immersion, the feeling to be completely absorbed in a new reality instead of just another fancy computer simulation.

But the applications of Cyberith and Virtuix Omni are not limited to VR entertainment. They also offer incredible improvements to the overall running experience, as those devices are much more exciting than treadmills. Ultimately, they allow combining things that seemed to be mutually exclusive before: Athletics and video games. If you go physically running in a virtual environment, but end up working out in reality – isn’t that environment suddenly quite physical for your body? And isn’t that much closer to real sports?

Last year a company named "Race Yourself" tried something similar: They wanted to integrate augmented reality into sports, but apparently did not succeed, because they have not been heard of ever since. Their idea was to provide virtual running mates and virtual race tracks, but just as an augmentation to physical reality (hence “augmented” reality), using Google Glass. But with the struggles the product experiences, this seems to have no future at the moment.

But running in completely virtual environments offers the chance to visit central park one morning, and the Australian outback the next day. And the best thing about it: Even I can’t get lost.